A Love Letter from a Stray Moon (9 page)

And when there is a re-enthrallment and a re-enchantment, when there is grace in all eyes, there, then, scream the difficult birth, there, release true sky even out of iron.

Then, truly, let there be light.

In the brilliance of that light, all else recedes. There are galaxies reversing away from me at the speed of light, no walls anymore, neither you nor me, just the blinding light of blinding mind, you darling, you sweetheart.

With an uncanny instinct—and great sadness—Plato barred poets from his ideal republic, because they could stir the emotions of mankind. They will create revolutions, it is true; there are explosive devices in their metaphors and their diction is an act of guerrilla warfare. So fuselight and a hundred suns shine for the poet-revolutionaries of Spain and South America, all assassinated.

Liberty light to José Martí, driving out the Spanish colonialists, who killed him at the confluence of two rivers, and who would not cremate him for fear that his ashes would choke them.

‘My poetry is a wounded deer
Looking for the forest's sanctuary.'

What light for Lorca? Only moonlight and always the moon. Franco had him assassinated, shot at dawn with two anarchist bullfighters. ‘But all should know that I have not died.' And, when the sun on the fields is gold as onions, by that light, Miguel Hernández, goatherd, poet, revolutionary, you are remembered. Murdered slowly by the fascists after the Spanish Civil War, killed by mistreatment because you used your poetry as a flag of allegiance to goodness.

Rebel light to Victor Jara, who sang for his land against Pinochet's brutal tyranny, creating the wideness of wild gentleness, his hands on his guitar were the horses of song across the rolling pampas. They tortured him and broke all the bones in his hands, they tore him to pieces before they machine-gunned him to death. ‘Oh my god,' Neruda cried, ‘that's like killing a nightingale.' (Keats, another kind of nightingale, was killed by another kind of machine gun.)

A week later, Pablo, it was your turn, insurgent light to your barcarole. Not only a nightingale but an eagle, and the feathers fall across the oceans and rivers, each feather a tiny boat, punting its delicate immense significance to the stream where Marcos sits writing by candlelight the poetry of today's rebellion.

Winelight to the sweetest poet whose sad and kind eyes are forlorn for me. I shine for you. Nothing is lost in light so lovely, my lovely, nothing can be. Turquoise light to the painter of moon scenes whose heart was so open you could see right through her. Luminosity to the composer whose mind has perfect pitch for the tones of the soul, whose bells and clarity ring so pure they transpose from the key of music to the key of light. Skylark light to all those who know time only in nature. One swallow, three, the merry wren. Glistening cuntlight to the one lover and keen cocklight to the other and liplight to both come kissingtime.

Kindlight, kindling light to all mothers, all who I mother. Mother of all kinds of light, how I mother, for my mothering is stronger than my exile, and my solo song to the cosmos is the
risorgimento
of an ultimate motherhood.

I had no child. So? I never liked the taste of bitterness; I choose champagne every time. I mother mothering, then, and I drink to it with all my heart. Without me, when would blood flow or ovulation cascade? Mother of tides, I am mother of generosity and generations. Mother of no meanness, no subtraction, no belittling or demeaning, for though I understand the fallen, I never was mother to fallen things: I am mother of the resurgence of their spirits, mother of flight.

And, yes, it is true that if I mother nothing else, I mother the most: I quicken imagination in my womb, I rock thought in my arms, I sing reverse lullabies, twilight songs of such tantalising vivacity that consciousness springs awake and vividly alive, and a curious child in any room will always look at me. A shard torn out of the earth, I was gifted perhaps (or fated) for no mothering except the ultimate, mother of mind.

For I am catalyst, yeast and trouble. I am trickster, coyote and change. I am chaos, tempest and turbulence.

I am mother of courage, mother of the heartroots of courage, of
coeur
and
cor
, the courage to follow your heart, mother of maenads and mischief and glitter, mother of the good joke and the glint, mother of poetry and paradox and fucking, mother of arse and eyebright, mother of passion and booze and friendship, mother of songlines and tribe, mother of Mexico and the bones, mother of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, and the night sky, mother of kindness, hope and ambiguity, mother of Odysseus and the spices of Madras, mother of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, mother of
Los Desaparecidos
and the victims of state terror, mother of circling, chortling and hissing, mother of purring, wiggling and cusping, mother of chuckling, howling and spitting, mother of caressing, kicking and sucking, mother of Zapatistas, rebels and freedom, mother of grace and vehement dreams, mother of saxophone and jazz, mother of Orpheus, the Fool and the flute, mother of wildness, the souk and the prayer wheel, mother of luck, the tightrope and the merry-go-round, mother of aquamarine, scarlet and tawny, mother of shadow and light, mother of time's redemption, mother of moment, mother of rhythm and ordinary magic, mother of eternity, mother of now, mother of day in night and dark germination, mother of curiosity—of charisma—of charm, mother of the sanity of madness and unseen meaning, mother of the roots of words and the truth of metaphor, mother of the significant world and the inner verb, mother—in the end as in the beginning—of mind itself.

Where exile is only another choreography of my love, under a jaguar moon.

For their willingness to speak when others

wouldn't; for their sense of compassion

beyond their own lifetimes; for their

vision of the Earth as comprehensive

as the Moon's: this book is dedicated

to all climate change activists.

For their quixotic courage; for their

willingness to honour their land; for

their poetic knowledge that truth may

best be revealed masked: this book

is dedicated to the Zapatistas.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to pay tribute to Hayden
Herrera's biography of Frida Kahlo, which
gives both depth and detail to her story.

My gratitude to Michael Heyward and David
Winter at Text for their belief in this book.

With love and thanks to those who influenced
this book like bright pigments of colour
in running water: David, Vic, Jan, Ann,
Thea, Marg, Bill, Gareth, Giuliana, Buz,
Thoby and, significantly, Penny Rimbaud.